The recent controversy about whether people should be able to unlock their mobile phones proves that Congress needs to revisit copyright law -- particularly a provision that makes it illegal to tamper with digital locks on software. That's according to a broad coalition of digital rights groups as well as Silicon Valley companies.

Many marketers have made no secret of their desire to target ads to mobile users based on their location. But a new study indicates that geo-location targeting -- even when theoretically "anonymous" -- raises significant privacy concerns.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and Association of National Advertisers are bashing Mozilla's plan to start blocking third-party cookies by default in the next version of Firefox. But not everyone is rushing to condemn Mozilla. The Online Publishers Association, for one, doesn't seem to view the move as all that threatening. The publishers' organization says that the cookie-blocking plan "does not spell disaster for the advertising and publishing businesses."

Two years ago, Apple warned that it intended to stop allowing developers to access iPhone users' unique device identifiers. Now, the company has given developers a firm deadline: May 1. As of that date, the App Store "will no longer accept new apps or app updates that access UDIDs," Apple announced in a notice to developers. The company is advising developers to replace unique device identifiers -- 40-character alphanumeric strings -- with the "advertising identifiers" rolled out in iOS6.

A federal appeals court ruled today that the BitTorrent search engine IsoHunt is liable for copyright infringement. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit found that the service, operated by Gary Fung, induced users to infringe copyright by uploading and downloading popular movies

In a decision hailed by digital rights advocates, the Supreme Court made clear today that people have the right to resell merchandise that they purchased abroad. The court's 6-3 ruling means that people can continue to sell their used books, CDs, DVDs, even cars with copyrighted GPS systems, on Craigslist, eBay and other online marketplaces.

In 2010, hacker Andrew Auernheimer, better known as "Weev," exposed an AT&T security flaw that left iPad users' email addresses vulnerable. AT&T had posted iPad users' data on the Web, where the information could be accessed by anyone who figured out the correct URLs. Auernheimer and another hacker did so, and sent some of the email addresses to Gawker, in hopes of persuading AT&T to patch the hole. Gawker reported on the security glitch and published some of the information. For these acts, Auernheimer was convicted of computer fraud and identity theft. Today, he was sentenced to 41 months in ...